Courtesy Citybizlist – The Abell Foundation underwrote a comparison of Baltimore’s innovation ecosystem with that of Boston. Sean Pool and Matt Van Itallie, of Canterbury Road Partners, undertook the work and their report is telling of the challenges in front of us, but also reveals great promise of the resources we already have and what Baltimore’s innovation ecosystem can become. The full report can be found on the Abell Foundation website.

Sean and Matt set out to answer three foundational questions. What are the major characteristics of Baltimore and Boston’s current entrepreneurial ecosystems? What are some of the specific details of some of Boston’s institutions driving their ecosystem? What are the implications for Baltimore from the understandings these researchers reached in Boston? The Report is worth reading to gain insight to all these questions, but I am only going to focus on parts of the last one they raised – what can we learn from Boston?

From their research and frankly from the national press, it’s clear that Boston has an established entrepreneurial ecosystem, ahead of Baltimore’s community by essentially any measure. But that’s beside the point – Sean and Matt’s greater insight from Boston is really what should be Baltimore’s playbook – so here are their thoughts on how to accelerate the City’s entrepreneurial ecosystem in the near future: